The Inequality-Aware Organization

Abstract

This chapter provides the conceptual apparatus and practice toolkit for organizational strategists and stakeholders to engage with the important issue of economic inequality, which is increasingly gathering attention across the globe as a grand challenge of current times. It does so in three steps. First, the key spaces where organizations are implicated in the generation and perpetuation of economic inequality are drawn out on a Loci of Inequality map. These include organizational, inter-organizational, and macro loci of inequality. Second, the impact of these loci of inequality on the organization is disaggregated into three major dimensions—legitimacy, trust, and growth—that together comprise the LTG inequality-impact matrix. Finally, three organizational strategy levers—information, formulation, and execution—are discussed in terms of how they can help the organization act on the loci of inequality in order to reduce the inequality footprint of the organization and thereby address challenges to the organization along the legitimacy, trust, and growth dimensions of the LTG matrix. Taken together, these ideas provide an essential springboard towards building the inequality-aware organization of the future, i.e. an organization that understands its interaction with inequality, the challenges of inequality, and engages with relevant stakeholders to overcome these challenges.